This is one class that ended with a beginning - publication of our class sample journal, Topics in Scholarly Communications. The first issue includes some substantial work, and the results of an experiment that others might want to try out.
The Papers and Presentations Section includes final papers and presentations - work to be proud of, and point to.
Here is the Table of Contents for the Papers and Presentations section:
Natalie Porter - The Impact of Open Access for Scholars in India - Final Paper
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/184
Katherine Parker. Open Peer Review: Who Should Determine Quality?
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/183
Each article has its own URL, for example here is a link to Natalie Porter's The Impact of Open Access for Scholars in India - Final Paper http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/184
Joe Haigh. The Past, Present, and Future of the University Press
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/182
Matthew Hall. Scholarly Communications in Medicine - article
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/177
Larissa Halishoff. The Economics of Open Access Publishing.
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/175
Larissa Halishoff. Business Models for Open Access Scholarly Publishing.
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/174
Emma Tanis MacEntee. Inaugurating the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation: Current issues and trends amongst three B.C. Universities.
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/173
Emma Tanis MacEntee and Kelsey Dupuis. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD)
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/172
Christina Louise Struik. The past, present, and future of scholarly communications in ornithology.
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/libr559l/article/view/166
The journal will remain, if anyone wishes to add more items, such as those last few papers and presentations that didn't make it in time, for technical reasons. Please note that the cIRcle test space will disappear when the next version of DSpace is loaded at UBC Library (anticipated soon). Or, keep up your bio info, especially if you're looking for a job!
The Topics in Scholarly Communication journal is an experiment, in more than one sense. In the spirit of Open Notebook Science, I'll blog about the experiment, and the results.
Topics in Scholarly Communication is a sample journal, created by students in LIBR 559L at the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. The idea was for every student to learn a little bit about scholarly communications and publishing, and about the software Open Journal Systems at the same time. Many thanks to Bronwen Sprout and UBC Library for providing support for the journal.
Here are roughly the steps in creating the journal:
Technical setup - UBC Library
OJS in an hour distance training - Kevin Stranack, PKP
Setting journal policy & basic setup - class [note: we could have spent more time on this step]
The class decided that the journal would be:
- fully open access
- allow authors the full range of Creative Commons licensing
- employ open peer review
- employ author-friendly peer review
Peer Review Exercise:
1. Each student writes a one-page paper, using a specified set of references, early in the semester, creates an account in OJS as an author, and submits the paper. This is to be peer-reviewed, so accuracy is optional. This preprint is also self-archive in a test version of cIRcle, UBC's institutional repository.
2. Each student registers as a peer reviewer.
3. The Journal Manager (in this case, the Professor) assigns each student a role as an Editor, and assigns each article to an Editor).
4. The Editor selects and assigns two Peer Reviewers for each article.
5. Peer reviewers complete and submit their reviews.
6. Editors review comments of the peer reviewers, and send comments / reviews to the Authors.
7. Authors revise their work accordingly, and resubmit to OJS. They also self-archive their postprint in cIRcle.
8. After some trial and error, articles are uploaded as PDF and HTML as galley proofs, and sent to scheduling.
9. A test issue is published.
10. Students review the look, feel, and setup of the journal. A banner is added, the style sheet is tweaked. The description of the journal is updated. Readers' Tools are set up.
Papers and Presentations
11. Students decide to create another section, for completed Papers and Presentations. Works are reformatted for consistency, and uploaded.
12. The first issue is published!
Results: excellent work, and grads and students with a good understanding of scholarly communications and publishing.
Comments:
This exercise seemed to be quite valuable, to teach scholarly communications by actually going through all the steps. Some interesting conversations were started, particularly about peer review.
It might be a good idea to plan on a lab component to the class.
With the peer review exercise, it is very important that everyone keep up and hand things in on time - something to stress at the beginning of the semester.
Farewell, and very best wishes to everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed taking the class as much as I enjoyed teaching it. Best wishes with your future studies, and your careers. Keep in touch! A very special thank you to Peter Suber for joining our final class for an informative (distance) question and answer session.
Marks have been posted. I'll bring the final papers, in paper format, to the school this weekend to share the comments.
